


The Place for a Just Man

by talefeathers



Series: Welcome to the New Age [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Future American Dystopia AU, M/M, Starvation, Swearing, Violence, wow that's a terrible au title i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the government he's been publicly railing against finally finds a reason to imprison him, Enjolras takes a leaf from the book of nonviolent protest and commences a hunger strike. With his trial being pushed back daily and his friends being kept from posting bail, there's only one thing left to do: Enjolras has to be busted out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Place for a Just Man

**Author's Note:**

> This is based in this dystopian AU that I came up with for a multi-chapter fic I'm working on that may or may not ever end up seeing the light of day. Basically, Les Amis live in a French quarter of a future dystopian America (because I like to write what I know and my high school did not offer European history or government or anything), where they go to college and protest the country's corrupt and tyrannical regime. When one of the prisoners refers to "nighters" he's talking about the night guard that enforces a strict curfew. If anything else is unclear or if you're curious about anything, please let me know!

The young man that the guards had begun jeeringly referring to as Golden Boy sat unmoving in his bunk, back against the cold cement wall, eyes closed. He never so much as flinched when they slammed the bars of his cell with their nightsticks, or when the other prisoners called to him, alternately threatening violence and propositioning favors.

“Hey, blondie! They run outta room in the women’s cells, sweetheart?”

“You want some cigarettes? C’mon, junior, I’ll play you for ‘em!”

“You think you’re better than us or somethin? I’m gonna kick your self-righteous little ass!”

All of this he bore in silence, sometimes sleeping, sometimes reading the single book he’d been able to smuggle in with him, sometimes just pacing about his tiny cell to stretch his legs. Sometimes settling his hard blue eyes on one of the guards until they couldn’t return his gaze any longer. He never ate the food he was given.

“What’re you in for?” one man called. “The nighters bust your lemonade stand?”

“Nah, didn’t you hear?” answered another. “The kid’s a crusader for justice! Isn’t that right, prettyboy? He _likes_ being locked up in here with us. He thinks that by sitting in that cell he’s gonna make Big Brother take a step back!”

They laughed at that, but at least, the young man thought, they did so bitterly. They shouted sarcastic well-wishes, recounted tales of rumored past movements and protests and even revolts that had been so thoroughly snuffed out that no one could say for sure whether or not they’d actually taken place. They told him to throw in the towel while he still had the chance, while he was still young enough to play along and make life a little easier for himself. They called him stupid, naive, pretentious for thinking that he, a middle-class college brat, could help any of them.

All of this he listened to without giving any sign that he heard; he continued to sit and sleep and read and walk as if he were the only one there. Anyone paying close enough attention, however, would have watched his hands curl into white-knuckled fists when they told him his efforts were useless. On the fourth day the guards began force feeding him.

His trial was pushed back daily. He was told that no one was posting his bail, which meant that really his friends weren’t being allowed to -- he knew more of their tenacity and dedication than these men ever could, as it was why he had chosen them in the first place. When the guards gave him this news they smirked, thinking it a victory. They didn’t recognize the twitch of the young man’s lips as a smile.

On the ninth day they put cuffs on his wrists to keep him from putting his fingers down his throat after they fed him. He’d stopped standing up to stretch his legs. He’d stopped reading. He sat on his bunk and he stared at the cinderblock wall opposite him. The other inmates no longer jeered at him. They told themselves that they were bored of him, but in the parts of their hearts that didn’t get let out, they knew they were sad. They knew they were watching the slow death of something beautiful.

The golden-haired revolutionary shut his eyes. And then all the lights went out.

The cell block erupted; inmates cheering, guards barking commands, footfalls and scuffles and clangings and clatterings. It was pitch-black; even the guards’ flashlights weren’t working. It was nothing short of complete and utter pandemonium.

Just beneath the clamor around him the blond prisoner heard a high-pitched, technological whir that ended in the cuffs on his arms falling away. A hand grabbed his and began to pull.

“Come on! Enjolras, _come on!”_

He barely recognized the voice. Or rather, he’d never heard it so serious or so nervous. He let himself be pulled through the dark until the noises around him began to fade. As the commotion grew distant, however, his own presence of mind returned to him. He yanked his hand free.

“Grantaire, what are you doing?”

“What do you _fucking_ think I’m doing?” his friend spat. Enjolras dodged Grantaire’s attempts to reclaim his hand. “They wouldn’t let us post your bail!”

“Yeah,” Enjolras said, voice level. “They think I’m important enough to keep locked up. They’re afraid of me. Don’t you see?”

“I see they’re trying to kill you.” Enjolras tensed as one of Grantaire’s hands brushed a bruise on his forehead, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. Feuilly must have found him some nightvision lenses. Enjolras shook himself and took a step back. Grantaire made an exasperated noise.

“No, they’re not,” Enjolras explained. “They’re too smart for that. Killing me would make me a martyr. It would take too long to shut Combeferre and the others up; everyone would know that it was a political killing and Lamarque would be able to use it as fuel. That’s why I’ve been refusing food.”

“You’ve been _refusing --?”_ Enjolras could practically feel the anxiety rolling off the other man in waves. He couldn’t understand it. This couldn’t be Grantaire. This couldn’t be the eternally drunk Classics major who liked to flip bottle caps into the air and catch them on his nose during pre-rally meetings at the Cafe Musain. “You are _such a goddamn idiot._ We’re getting you out of here, we’re gonna get you some McDonald’s, then we’re --”

“No.”

_“Why the fuck not?”_

“‘The only place for a just man in an unjust society is prison.’ Henry David Thoreau.” Enjolras’s voice cracked. It’d been too long since he’d last used it. “If you bust me out now they will have ammunition against me. They’ll reduce me to just another militant anarchist who would like nothing more than to dismantle everything this country stands for, or they’ll say that I’m too weak to suffer for the ideals I so adamantly upheld, that I’m a naive college student who didn’t know what he was getting into. We can’t fight back directly or they’ll say that we provoked them; it’ll excuse them to wipe us out, squash us like so many others. I have to suffer within the law, Grantaire, and you and the others have to _tell_ people about it.”

“But --!”

“If you are effective, as I have faith you can be, then they’ll have to let me go, because the people will demand it,” Enjolras continued. “Whatever this government might be, it still pretends that it’s a democracy, and we’re going to call that bluff.” Enjolras still couldn’t see his friend, so he groped in the darkness until he found Grantaire’s arm and clamped down on it to convey the intensity he would normally leave to his gaze. “But the only way I’m leaving this jail cell is by forcing them to release me legally, in full knowledge of what they are doing. Anything less is defeat.”

This time it was Grantaire who tore his arm from Enjolras’s grip. “Enjolras that is _never going to happen._ Even if every single person in this entire country begs for your release, these bastards will still let you starve yourself, because at least that way they’ll stop you talking! You’re gonna waste away, you’re gonna _die_ in here, and maybe that’ll make you a martyr and maybe that’ll work in the long run but I can’t, I _can’t --!”_

He cut himself off. Enjolras heard him inhale shakily. He wasn’t sure what to make of the way his chest tightened at the sound.

“You can’t what?” he murmured. When Grantaire didn’t answer he reached for his arm again, more gently this time. “Grantaire.”

“Nothing, forget it,” Grantaire muttered, but he didn’t pull his arm away. “The lights are gonna come back on in five minutes. If you’re honestly not coming then you’d better head back. God knows what they’ll do to you for being out of your cuffs, let alone for being out of your cell.”

There was a moment of heavy silence. Enjolras had to get back to his cell, he was _going_ to get back to his cell, but there was something hanging in the darkness between him and Grantaire that he felt he needed to grab hold of. He opened his mouth to ask about it.

And then Grantaire was kissing him.

It was a lot to sort through. There was surprise, of course; it was pitch-dark and there were lips on his that hadn’t been there a second ago. There was a little bit of pain, from the bruises around his mouth. But mostly there was the pleasant dizziness, the lightness in his stomach, the sunburst in his chest. Shaking fingers traced his jaw. And then it was over.

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire said, his voice thick. “ _Shit_ I’m sorry, I just -- I needed you to know. Before -- I mean _in case_ \-- fuck, just -- just do me a favor and pretend that never happened, okay? I’m leaving now. Okay.”

He moved to leave, but Enjolras kept a firm grip on him, releasing Grantaire’s forearm only so that he could grab his hand.

“Wait a minute --”

“Enjolras, please, you have to go, they’ll --”

“I believe in you, Grantaire.”

He heard the breath leave Grantaire in a rush.

“What?” he squeaked.

Enjolras squeezed his hand as tightly as he could. “I believe in you. Before, I thought you were passionless, but I was wrong. You’ll do what you have to do.” He let go. “Now get out of here.”

When the lights came back on, Golden Boy was in his cell, which was more than could be said for many of the others. The guards used him as an outlet for their frustration at the breakout; what they said was that they were disciplining him for having broken out of his cuffs. Try as they might, however, they couldn’t seem to beat the smile (there was no mistaking it this time) off his battered, once-marble face.


End file.
